President Barack Obama is poised to flesh out in the coming weeks his second-term climate change agenda, a three-part plan that will focus broadly on energy efficiency, renewable energy and Environmental Protection Agency regulations, a top White House adviser said Wednesday.

White House energy adviser Heather Zichal said the president is “going to be speaking about climate change in the weeks ahead.” POLITICO reported last week that the plan is likely coming in July.

While Zichal declined to offer specifics on Obama’s agenda, she suggested the plan will center on three “key opportunities” that will not require new funding or new legislation, an acknowledgment that there is no chance Congress will take significant action on the issue.

“From a policy perspective, if there’s one thing I’ve learned in 4½ years in the White House, it’s not to get in front of the big guy,” she said, referring to the president.

Zichal’s comments come amid growing agitation in the environmental community over the absence of a clear climate strategy from the White House. While Obama has made a number of speeches promising action, activists say it’s time for the president to put his money where his mouth is.

But she said in her remarks at an event hosted by The New Republic that the plan will expand on the administration’s efforts to permit more renewable energy on public land, promote energy efficiency and reduce greenhouse gas emissions through the Clean Air Act.

“Going forward, obviously the EPA is going to be working very hard on rules that focus specifically on greenhouse gas emissions from the coal sector. They’re doing a lot of important work in that space,” she said.

Zichal said she did not want to “pre-empt whatever it is that the Environmental Protection Agency is going to do,” but she suggested that the near-term priority will be climate change regulations for power plants, not refineries.

Asked about EPA’s settlement agreements to address greenhouse gas emissions from existing and new power plants, as well as existing and new refineries, Zichal said, “I think in the near term, we are very much focused on the power plants piece of the equation.”

She also declined to offer details when asked about reports that the EPA is planning to repropose or alter climate regulations for power plants.

“We have never as a country put forward a regulation on new or existing coal plants before,” she said. “And I think whether that’s the president or the team over at EPA, everyone is very focused on making sure that those policies are done the right way, that those policies are going to provide the right incentives going forward, the right policy to really drive emissions reductions. And I’m very confident that we’ll land that policy in the right place.”

More broadly, Zichal tried to make the case that the president is serious about tackling climate change, despite criticism that the issue has taken a back seat in recent years.

“He knows that this is a legacy issue,” she said, listing off the administration’s efforts so far to address climate change, including strengthening fuel economy standards and expanding renewable energy.

“After all that we’ve done, after all that historic progress in the first four years, we are well-poised to take meaningful action for the second term,” she continued.

And she said the president is going to work to depoliticize climate change.

“It’s time to turn this issue from a red-state, blue-state issue to an American issue, and frankly that’s what I think you’ll be seeing from the president and the rest of his Cabinet — a sustained focus on depoliticizing the climate on climate policy,” she said.

But Zichal steered clear of talking about the Keystone XL oil pipeline. The Obama administration is set to make a final decision on the project in the coming months. And environmental activists have launched an aggressive campaign to pressure the president to reject it, casting the decision as a key part of his climate change legacy.

Zichal declined to take more questions from the press after the event.